Gains By Opposition Confirmed In Mexico Elections

MEXICO CITY — Official results have confirmed that opposition parties won a major share of power in national elections this month, bringing new pluralism to a country that had been a one-party state.

The official tallies, issued late Sunday, concluded a vote widely regarded as the cleanest in Mexico's modern history. The final count was close to preliminary results released by the federal elections council in the hours after the polls closed on July 6.

The outcome was a vindication for the head of the elections council, Jose Woldenberg, who had pledged to run an election that would give Mexicans new confidence.

The official results showed that the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which governed Mexico virtually unchallenged for almost seven decades, lost its majority in the lower house of Congress. But the party will still have the largest delegations in both houses of the legislature.

According to estimates based on the official figures, the PRI will have 239 seats in the 500-seat lower house.

In a surprise result, the left-of-center Democratic Revolution Party will have the second-largest delegation, with 125 seats. The conservative National Action Party, which has been Mexico's second political force, is expected to have 122 seats, and smaller parties will divide the rest.

The PRI will continue to dominate the Senate, but it no longer has the power to approve any significant legislation without forging alliances with opposition legislators.

The Democratic Revolution Party, known, or PRD, was buoyed by the decisive victory in the Mexico City mayoral race of its founding leader, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who took 47 percent of the vote in the first election for the post in decades. His party also won 38 of 66 seats in the capital's City Council, giving him a free hand to carry out his policies.

Cardenas is facing a long transition, because he does not take office until Dec. 5. After an amicable meeting with Cardenas late Monday, President Ernesto Zedillo announced that he would cede some of his powers by allowing the mayor-elect to name a new police chief and district attorney for the capital, which is gripped with a crime epidemic. By law Zedillo is still entitled to make those appointments.